S-mel Ya Later

So Melanie’s gone. Again. Can someone enlighten me as to what the point of this return was?

I love Molly Burnett and like Melanie (particularly when they don’t write her as a stammering doofus), but this whole return stint felt so off. If they knew she was only back for six months, why did they throw her into a romance with Brady? They could’ve told almost the exact same story with them just being friends, minus the weeks of “Should we go on a date to see if we want to date?” stuff. Plus the friendship with Serena felt forced, and we barely got to see her with Abigail, Chad, Sonny, or Will. This whole thing reeked of desperately wanting a familiar heroine on the show to fill the hole left by Sami and Alison Sweeney, story be damned.

That said, Molly Burnett nailed all her goodbye scenes. I bought into her emotions so much that I almost even bought her ridiculous reasoning for leaving town — which was so flimsy and ill-developed that they might as well have slapped a sign on-screen that said, “Sorry, her short-term contract is up!” Her goodbye with Nicole was surprisingly terrific, especially how they had her tell Nicole to stop putting herself down, and I’m such a sucker for the Melanie/Maggie relationship. I still wish they hadn’t retconned them into being relatives, because the beauty of their bond was that they saved one another at just the right point in each of their lives: Melanie as she was spinning out following Trent’s death, and Maggie when she was losing Mickey. Burnett and Suzanne Rogers are so wonderful together, and their affection for one another (both the actresses’ and the characters’) really shone through in those scenes.

Farewell, Melanie, and may the next time we see you either be for an appropriate-length visit or a story that makes actual sense.

Same. If they wanted to pair her and Brady, it should have been a sloooooow build. They could have done the same investigation and Italy story without pairing them, and then had them be in mortal danger in Italy and discover they might actually have deeper feelings for one another. It was so sloppily done.

Maybe the whole reason for bringing Melanie back was to inspire viewers that we too can be victorious in the face of killer inflatable rafts?

But seriously, I’m sure there was a ratings scam in there somewhere with them needing an old-school heroine to bridge the Sami “gap.” And while Melanie was the tool for finding out about Kristen and Tate, that obviously could have been done in a hundred other ways without the use of Melanie.

But … perhaps there was a hidden (although with these writers, I’m sure unintentional) gem in what she did for Brady and the Brady/Theresa SL. She gave Theresa another opportunity to take outlandish measures to get back with Brady by ousting Melanie, thereby giving Brady another reason to hate Theresa’s guts, thereby keep the conflict rolling between Theresa and Brady. She also served Brady’s SL by, for ONCE in his life, showing him what a real relationship is and what it’s like to have a normal, sane GF. So now, as he battles Theresa’s craziness, it’ll be interesting to see what, if any, new choices he makes in relationships, and in his life, based on his experience with Melanie. And I thought Melanie’s reason for leaving Salem were rather solid … she grew up in a nightmare because she didn’t have her real father, so I buy that she would take such swift and drastic measures to spare Tate the awful life she had to live. … plus, it put out there “The major sacrifice for love” which SHOULD put Brady in a position to start realizing all the TERRIBLE mistakes he’s made in the past with the other imbalanced crazy bitches he’s proposed to.

All of that stuff does deepen the story, for sure. I do think it’s funky that Brady fell in love with Mel, lost her, saw Theresa as such a manipulator, and now…? Is he going to get with Theresa? I’m wary that he’ll move on to another ‘great love’ quickly since we know Mel won’t be back. I also think that if MB hadn’t been leaving, she and Brady would have pulled a scheme on Theresa (like: record her threatening Melanie and use that in a custody case!) instead of so quickly packing up and leaving.

ONLY because there will be new writers am I actually looking forward to what’s next for Brady and Theresa, both the evolution of their individual characters, as well as their relationship with each other. And hopefully Paul doesn’t become the token brother…I hope we get to see him at the K mansion a lot.